Speaker
The majority of Brontë's works feature a first-person speaker. They are usually women wrestling with a significant existential question in a heightened emotional register. Very often, their tone is reflective and melancholy, focusing on details from nature as well as their internal turmoil. In "Remembrance," the speaker describes her long period of grief in the following terms: "Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover / Over the mountains, on that northern shore, / Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover / Thy noble heart forever, ever more?" She uses vocabulary derived from the natural world to portray her grief process, showing its changes over time.
In the poem "Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun," the speaker maintains a similarly passionate tone of voice. She vividly depicts an encounter with a lover in a dream: "I was at peace, and drank your beams / As they were life to me / And revelled in my changeful dreams / Like petrel on the sea." Many of the same qualities are consistent in the register of the writing: evocations of nature (birds, sunlight), emphasis on an internal state, and heightened emotional intensity. Brontë's speakers are largely unified by their stylistic commonalities.
Beloved
Another figure that appears often in Brontë's poetry is a lover or beloved. The speakers in her poems often write about a lover who they have lost. They describe the state of pain or anguish that this has left them in, in contrast to the joy they formerly felt in the lover's presence. "Remembrance" powerfully encapsulates this sentiment in the following stanza: "No later light has lightened up my heaven, / No second morn has ever shone for me; / All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given, / All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee." The repetition of the phrase "All my life's bliss" summarizes what the speaker previously had and what she now feels she has lost. The intensity of this passage is characteristic of how many of Brontë's speakers describe their loved ones.
Divine Figure
Another recurring character in Brontë's poems is a divine or celestial being. In "No Coward Soul Is Mine," Brontë offers a vision of an all-powerful God, whose omnipotence permeates every aspect of creation: "With wide-embracing love / Thy spirit animates eternal years / Pervades and broods above, / Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears." This excerpt shows the way in which Brontë sought to put words to an idea of divinity that was all-powerful and omnipresent. Her listing of various verbs in the last line firmly establishes the impression of this figure as involved in all parts of existence, with an influence that extends beyond human comprehension. This attempt to describe such a sublime force recurs throughout her work.
Hope
In "Hope," the speaker provides a description of the emotion of hope, personifying it as an unkind friend. She depicts the following: "Hope Was but a timid friend; / She sat without the grated den, / Watching how my fate would tend, / Even as selfish-hearted men." She critiques Hope harshly, stating that she only observes her misfortunes with a neutral eye, and never steps in to help her when she needs it most. By personifying Hope, the speaker is better able to give the reader a clear understanding of what she is struggling with and why she feels abandoned. This technique of concretizing abstract ideas into characters is a hallmark of Brontë's work.
